Chez Katherine

Thursday 20 December 2007
A very thick frost this morning, and temperatures still well below freezing. Forecast is for milder weather by Sunday and rain by Christmas Day! It is exactly two years since I signed the papers for this house and got the keys - a day of freezing fog I seem to remember. Today there is bright sunshine, like most of this week, and this morning I have been out with my camera in the village and taken pictures of the shops and the Christmas decorations. I met Marie-Antoinette by the Post Office - I was trying to scrape the ice off the post box to make sure I put the letters in the right opening - and she thanked me for the Christmas card and kissed me on both cheeks and said, as so many people have, that she supposed we were having a lot of family here for Christmas. I do so wish we were; this is just the right sort of house for a big family Christmas party. N and I have discussed it all several times; all we can do is just keep inviting everybody, I suppose, but it is obviously so much easier for them to travel to Paris at this time of year, and to Normandy in the summer.
It was quite an eventful morning in the end; by the time I had got back after my photography, and then gone back to the shop again for things I had forgotten, N had managed to book us an outing in Paris during Kathryn and Iona's visit at the beginning of January. He had been trying all sorts of musical events and shows, but had found nothing suitable, then tried Circuses, and has got seats for the four of us at an afternoon performance at the Cirque d’Hiver, the place where I sang the Saint John Passion at Easter over a year ago. We had seen on the TV news that it had been closed for refurbishment and had just re-opened, and this is a real old-fashioned circus with clowns, animals, woman fired from a canon, trapeze artists etc etc. Also suitable as it doesn’t require much knowledge of French! and good because such things aren’t often seen in Britain these days.
The other event was the discovery of a phone message from DHL saying they had two cases of wine to deliver to us (N was expecting these) and leaving an indistinguishable phone number. We spent some time listening and re-listening to the message and noting various numbers, with no luck; until now - well after lunch - N finally made contact and they will deliver tomorrow.
To celebrate being châtelaine of this house for a whole two years, I am planning a Gala Dinner for this evening with a Normandy Theme, involving lots of apples, cider, calvados and cream. I bought two pork chops from the butcher for only 2 euros 10, and two branches of celery from the little supermarket - I love being able to buy celery by the branch; so much better than having to buy a whole head when you only need a branch or two. When I brought the celery home it still had « 0.29 euros » written on it in biro, no paper bag. N said I should have photographed it.
The boulangerie is now full of wonderful seasonal things - sweets and chocolates, spicy fruit breads and decorated logs, and a notice saying it will be open on the 25th from 7.00 am till 1.00 pm. I shall try to go a little earlier in the day than I did last year. We are proposing to do our pre-Christmas food shopping tomorrow, at the Champion supermarket in Conches.
Friday 21 December 2007
When I went out to get the bread this morning I wished I’d had my camera with me like yesterday; I could just see Father Christmas and a man leading a donkey disappearing round the bend in the road. I thought they had probably been visiting the school, and was amused at the link between the modern idea of Christmas and the Nativity. (Although there are a lot of donkeys in this part of the world...) As I left the boulangerie they were coming back into the village, stopping and shaking hands with people outside the maison de la presse. They seemed to be coming towards our house, so I went in and got the camera and then found them outside the garage, talking to the proprietor; I recognised the donkey handler as the Deputy Mayor and he nodded to me. I asked if I could take their photo from over the road, and they obligingly posed, then waved before going back in the other direction. I then saw the Village Ginger Cat rushing away quickly; I don’t think he cares for donkeys, even at Christmas.
The other Christmas development over the last day or two is the loudspeakers in the street - just like the last two years - broadcasting Christmas music and a sort of local radio; very local indeed, just La Neuve-Lyre. N thinks this is awful; I agree as far as indiscriminate pop music is concerned but rather enjoy the Christmas music (trumpet version of Jingle Bells, for example) and find the ads for local shops and businesses very interesting. I remember listening to lots of it last Christmas morning while queuing outside the boulangerie for over half an hour and will probably do the same this year.
The rest of the morning I spent making mince pies, using last year’s mincemeat from the freezer, and we enjoyed the first of them after lunch. We haven’t been able to go supermarket shopping yet, as we are still waiting for the wine delivery.
Sunday 23 December 2007
A rather confusing and eventful couple of days. We never did get our wine delivered on Friday, despite receiving a phone call from the wine company to check, and their saying they would get in touch with the delivery driver. We assumed nothing will happen during the weekend, so will wait till Monday, Christmas Eve. Because we were in all day waiting, we didn’t get our Christmas food shopping done either, and postponed it till Saturday.
In the evening N wasn’t very well at all; I think because of a rather old packet of Swiss Rosti well past its date - having not done our shopping we ate something from the store cupboard instead. (I was fine!) This meant our bathroom was out of bounds to me all the evening and some of the night; it’s just as well we have two others. Suggested as New Year’s Resolution not eating anything at all past its « best before » date. Poor N recovered slowly on Saturday; small breakfast in bed, boiled egg for lunch and Heinz Tomato Soup for supper, fortunately we had just one tin left!
I wasn’t sure he should have been driving to Conches for food shopping, but he said he was OK; admittedly it’s not very far or very difficult, and we both agreed we ought not to postpone it again till Monday as we should be waiting in for the wine. We had not been out in the car for a week, and the roads and hedgerows were very white with thick frost, almost like snow. I don’t think I have ever experienced weather quite like this before - very dry and sunny and well below freezing for seven days at a stretch. The promised rise in temperature and the rain don’t seem likely yet, either.
Food shopping went well, except that I couldn’t find any cranberries; there were lots around last year, so was surprised; will look in the village and market tomorrow. When we got back, having checked the internet, N was annoyed to find that the parcel we had sent his son-in-law John had not yet arrived; in fact had only got as far as La Barre-en-Ouche.
This is a saga that goes back a long way; to the end of November I think. John wanted to buy a computer game for Kathryn and Iona over the internet as a Christmas present; it was unavailable in Britain and needing to be posted to an address outside the UK. He asked N if he could have it sent to us (and we would then send it on). N agreed but said we were about to go to back to Paris. Many e-mails flowed to and fro relating its progress; when we got back here to LNL it was at the Post Office waiting, so we fetched it, repackaged it and the next day sent it off again; addressed this time, as John had requested, to his mother-in-law in Billericay, so as to preserve the surprise element at home.
This was some ten days ago, and N was hoping to hear that it had arrived safely, so was annoyed to read while checking its progress on the relevant website that it had gone to Bernay, where it had had its address « amended or corrected » , and was waiting to be collected at La Barre-en-Ouche! We can only surmise that some incompetent machine or Post Office employee read Billericay as Bernay, despite the GRANDE BRETAGNE in very large letters and the address copied on to N’s part of the form which he still has, it having sent it Registered.
N will go to our local Post Office first thing tomorrow (while I wait in for the wine delivery.....) and see if the lovely Estelle can find out whether it is still at La Barre-en-Ouche, and if so whether he can go and fetch it. I also hope to get to the market. Meanwhile we have had a nice quiet Sunday, and have had Nut Roast for lunch - N’s cousin Penny’s family recipe which I found while looking for the Chestnut Stuffing recipe for tomorrow. We bought nuts yesterday, and N sat cracking them by the fire this morning as he thought this was a suitable Christmas activity, and there were many jokes about « getting cracking. » I thought the Nut Roast was better for his still delicate digestion than meat. We also had some home-grown parsnips nicely mashed and a small rhubarb crumble with fruit from the freezer. And then - beside the Christmas tree - we read the next few chapters of The Box of Delights, hoping to finish it over the Christmas holiday.
I have finished reading the final volume of Les Thibault; the end part containing the very depressing journal of the hero, wounded then gassed at Ypres, and dying in the months of autumn 1918 just as peace is declared. I have begun looking at my waiting copies of the London Review of Books, entertaining as usual, beginning with a review of a new biography of Rudolf Nureyev, an article about Nixon and Kissinger and pieces on the Crusades, Hitler, and Mussolini. Always a variety!
Monday 24 December 2007
N got up early and sorted out the parcel problem this morning - he decided after all to go straight to the Post Office at La Barre-en-Ouche. It turned out that the confusion had been caused by the Post Office employee here at LNL filing in an Overseas form instead of an International form; which was why it needed correcting and re-addressing at La Barre-en-Ouche. He then called at our local Post Office for the correct form, and said he thought Estelle looked a bit sheepish about it all, not surprisingly as this is the second or third British parcel which has caused us problems. Anyway, it was sent on its way on Friday 21st.
While all this was going on I called the number for the wine delivery; eventually got though and the two cases arrived as promised at about 2.00 pm, and are now safely in the wine cellar; N used the wheelbarrow to take them there from the front gate.
I could find no cranberries at the market - the people at the fruit & veg stall were very curious when I described them, but seemed pleased that I bought more dates. I called in at the maison de la presse for the first time in some weeks - no further shop-fitting has taken place; it still looks fairly ramshackle and temporary, but seemed to be doing a roaring trade. I found a fascinating postcard showing an aerial view of the village - our house is clearly visible, with all the shutters open! I then waited ages in the queue at the boulangerie, and have decided N can go tomorrow.
This afternoon - in the traditional way - I have listened to the Carol Service from Cambridge while making chestnut stuffing and preparing the vegetables for tomorrow. I had a sudden idea and checked the BBC website and found that I could download and print the Order of Service, just as it is always printed in the Radio Times, which made it all much more enjoyable. We listened to the end of the programme - still on the tiny portable radio - while having tea and mince pies in the salon; N said it was like listening to London while in the French Resistance.
Wednesday 26 December 2007
Boxing Day, and there is that special smell in the air of boiling chicken stock. We have spent a very nice couple of days eating, drinking, reading, opening presents, watching TV and DVDs and generally sitting about in front of the fire, punctuated by nice family phone calls. I now have three nice new fat books waiting by my bed, all auto/biographies of interesting women; Marie-Antoinette, Agatha Christie and Simone Veil. N bought me four DVDs of films of instalments of the life of the Austrian Empress Sisi; I was surprised and pleased that they were so easily available. We haven’t watched any of these so far, but yesterday evening watched the film of The Third Man, a present from my sister Issy. I thought it was interesting that both these were as a result of our visit to Vienna; N said it has obviously had a great influence on us. He also gave me a beautiful picture book of Paris and a book about Mozart and postage stamps. I gave him a book of humorously translated « mistakes » in English which I bought in Vienna, which he read and laughed at most of yesterday, also his Cambridge University Diary some time back, and have still to get him a pullover once we get back to some shops.
The best thing about Christmas though, has been the reading of the final chapters of The Box of Delights, our ‘Sunday serial’ which we finished yesterday and today in front of the fire after lunch. Definitely a good idea to read a Christmas Book at Christmas, and to have several episodes over the holiday, not just on Sunday.
I didn’t sleep well last night, perhaps because it was the first night in a week or so that we haven’t shut the bedroom shutters to keep out the cold - the weather changed as promised and it is now mild and wet. But the moon was bright, so perhaps more difficult to sleep. I thought it might also be because I didn’t go out at all yesterday, so this morning decided on a Boxing Day Walk; around parts of the village I have never seen and others I don’t see often, partly prompted by the postcard with the aerial view of the village. It was all very damp and grey and I thought it would have been a very different walk last week, or on a fine day in the summer. I saw lot of interesting little houses though, a variety of Christmas decorations and hardly any people until I got back to the market place with the shops again. Here all was a normal working day, Quincaillerie open, postmen going about their business, builders renovating a shop. I couldn’t help thinking it would all have been very different in Britain. Our postal delivery fortunately brought our circus tickets; I was worried we shouldn’t receive them before leaving for Saint-Denis.
Thursday 27 December 2007
This morning N and I both went to the hairdressers at the same time, something we have never done before. There was a lot of talk with our two stylists about what we had all just eaten over the holiday, and how the English differed from the French in this, and then N broached the subject of Monsieur A and his lack of interest in servicing our heating system. Neither was particularly surprised; one said we needed to go on and on at him and demand an appointment, the other said he tries to do too many different things and can’t keep up with the after-sales maintenance, unlike his father apparently, who had the business before him. She said that once he had come so late to sweep her chimney - after having been asked many times - that it exploded and covered him in soot, about which she was very pleased! N and I plan to drive round to Monsieur A’s « office » and confront him together, when we get back from Paris.
We arrived at the subject of heating by talking about the weather - still so much milder than last week, and getting progressively more so. Our « intelligent » heating system has adjusted itself accordingly, so that the rooms are sometimes a little cooler than expected. We have even heard one of our pigeons cooing outside, and seen him in the garden; we don’t know what they normally do at this time of year, but don’t remember him (or any of his colleagues) being around before during the winter.
Tomorrow we are driving back to Paris, ready for New Year celebrations and the visit of Kathryn and Iona next week, West Side Story and the circus. This means that most of the post- Christmas clearing up will be left until after we get back, probably not before the middle of January, but it can’t be helped, it will just have to be incorporated into an early Spring Cleaning.
We are now ready to start thinking again about selling the Saint-Denis apartment, and buying a new one - an big exciting project for the New Year.

Monday 16 December 2007
To market, to market to buy a Christmas tree. N went and fetched a good big one yesterday morning, which we have put in the salon in front of the French windows as last year, but as it is so tall have moved the sofa sideways, as we had thought of doing when the piano comes here. The tree smells lovely, and we had fun decorating it yesterday afternoon, also a couple of smaller artificial trees and decorative candles.
There are more and more decorations in the village too; this will be the third year we have seen them as they were all here when we arrived almost exactly two years ago. The street lights have been up for some time, now joined by two big fir trees either side of the church door and the life-size crèche and manger in the market place, with Mary and Joseph in their second-hand polyester garments as usual. Shops are decorated too, in particular the hairdressers, (I complimented them when I went to make an appointment) the boulangerie and the traiteur.
When N came back from the market with the tree he said that all the stalls were "huddled" together - when I went along later I could see this new arrangement; the fish man said what did I expect, it was cold; and the fruit & veg man said last week they had to give up and go home as the stall almost blew away. (We had noticed reports of storms in Normandy while we were in Paris.) I was buying some wonderful large and sticky soft dates; I'd had some three weeks ago when last visiting the market, and was pleased to find there were some left. Dates and clementines are our constant and very seasonal « dessert » at the moment.
Temperatures are very low at present; typically -4 or -5 degrees first thing in the morning and not much higher later. There is ice on the water butts and watering cans all day. On our newest rhododendron nearest the verandah door there is a large fat icicle, which we think is as a result of the steam coming from the heating chimney above. This is an « Albert Schweitzer » rhododendron; last week N confused me by referring to it as Albert Einstein; I said I thought neither of them would be flattered by the comparison, he said on the contrary both should be very flattered.
On Sunday we lit the fire as usual, although we had also lit it on the day we arrived back last week to warm us and the house up, and because it was nice having tea and reading all our Christmas correspondence in front of it. After lunch we began reading «The Box of Delights«, N’s choice and a book I have never come across before. It’s not that easy to follow, and reminds me of so many other children’s stories - « The Snow Queen », « The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe », various E Nesbit stories, and Harry Potter, to name but a few. As the story culminates on Christmas Day, I think we shall have to have a few extra token Sunday readings, so as to finish it on either Christmas Day or Boxing Day, and not be reading it through various Sundays in January.
It’s very pleasant and a little unusual to have all presents and cards finished and done with so early! The presents we have received are under our tree, and I am enjoying receiving cards from friends who have received and answered my Christmas letter and who are sending their own! In Cambridge it was lovely to receive cards of course, often posted through the door from friends nearby, but they are all the more special when they have come over the sea, and contain news from people I haven’t seen for some time, and not heard from since last Christmas.
N is still spending a lot of his time on researching adverts for apartments, both in magazines and on the internet, still occasionally changing his mind about exactly what he wants and needs and about which areas are best. It’s all we can do at the moment - until the holidays are over and we are back in Saint-Denis - but I don’t think any research into suitable areas will be wasted - we both already know a lot more about the geography of the western Paris suburbs than we did, and will doubtless know even more by the time we have finished. He has also had fun re-arranging the theme from the Wallace and Gromit films for trumpet and piano, in response to a Christmas request from his granddaughter Iona. This involved buying a book over the internet called « Movie Themes You Have Always Wanted to Play » some of which he might even play on the piano!
After knitting and sewing various small Christmas items, including some fabric napkin rings for the apartment at Saint-Denis, I have returned to my long-term project - a rose-patterned cushion which had lain unfinished in my sewing trunk for many years. It went into store when I moved from Cambridge and has been upstairs in the sewing room ever since, but was re-started when I finished the red sampler, and should keep me busy for a long time to come.
I am now half-way though reading the final volume of Les Thibault, trying to make it last! There will be two editions of The London Review of Books to catch up with before I start on anything new.

Monday 10 December 2007

After seeing Madeleine and Caroline off at the Gare du Nord it was nice to be on our own again, and we began to wonder when we would receive the valuation for the apartment, and what it would be. I had a list of things I wanted to get done before the arrival of the next visitors on Friday; one of the most important was the Christmas cards. I had brought from LNL the labels, envelopes and stamps and having got the cards themselves in Bon Marché and finished the newsletter to go inside them, got them all in the post in Friday morning. All the making-up of beds and cleaning and tidying was done on Friday morning, too. I also went along to a picture framer N had recommended near the Basilique, with my poster of coffee and cakes from Vienna and an old gilt frame from the Italian house. The framer will add some glass and a border, and I can collect it when we go back at the beginning of January.

On Tuesday morning N had sent an e-mail to the estate agents asking if the valuation was ready and whether he could come and fetch it (he wanted to avoid it going in the post, where it would have automatically been forwarded to LNL along with the rest of his mail.) They said it would be ready that afternoon, so after going shopping together to get more family Christmas presents in the Virgin Megastore we went along and collected the valuation, which was considerably higher than N had thought it would be, in fact two and a half times what he paid for the apartment 10 years ago! (Taking into account the change from francs to euros.) This not surprisingly put him in a very good frame of mind for the rest of the day; in fact a Good bottle of wine was opened for dinner, and different and more expensive pages of the house magazines were consulted.

After much discussion and looking at maps and the house magazines themselves, we had decided that the best areas for a new apartment were those in the west or north-west of Paris, the right side for getting to and fro from Normandy. The western suburbs around the bend in the Seine are also the most desirable and expensive; we're not sure if this is a good or a bad thing! However there seem to be a good number to choose from with 2 or 3 bedrooms, about 70 or 80 m2 of floor space, a modern kitchen and bathroom, a garage or parking underground, a balcony, cellar, storage and nearby trains and shops, in the right price bracket. (Inevitably, perhaps, we are finding lots of words and especially abbreviations which were not included in the latest edition of the Lexique, and think we should begin to note these for the next edition.) We are both excited at the thought of a new “project”; the new verandah door at LNL is the last large (expensive!) thing needed there, and there is not so much to do and think about as there was when we first arrived.

Space is important - originally N thought of taking the grand piano to LNL, and perhaps some of the vast number of books, but has now decided he wants to keep all of this together, so storage is crucial. This is also because in the apartment here at Saint-Denis there are two lits-placards - beds which fold up into cupboards - one in the library where we sleep and a spare one for guests in the music room. Ideally these would come to a new apartment, and require specialist removing. There is also a huge piece of furniture called a "gentleman's commode", which N bought in an auction in Newmarket many years ago, and which houses not only his clothes but table and kitchen linen and spare bedding.

N favoured the area of Bougival, out to the west of Paris, as a place to begin the search for an apartment, so on Thursday afternoon we set out in the car - taking the opportunity to give it an outing after its various battery problems, and to put into the boot the two stools from Habitat and the laundry from last week's guests, going back to LNL for washing. It was not a good day for a drive; heavy rain and wind and traffic jams all round the outskirts of Paris. We got out in the main street in Bougival and visited an estate agent, the same chain as the one we are dealing with in Saint-Denis; got our names and requirements on his list, and picked up lots of local brochures. We also went though Chatou and La Celle Saint Cloud; nowhere looking particularly inviting on a wet December afternoon.

Eventually we had to get back to thinking about our guests arriving the next day, so stopped at the Super U supermarket in Chatou to stock up in readiness. By the time we had crawled back along the autoroute in the rain, and I had taken all the shopping upstairs to the apartment and N had got back after parking the car, it was dinner time.

Thursday 13 December 2007

Claire, Dan and Charlotte were due to arrive early on Friday afternoon. Another thing on my list of things to do last week had been the Messiah - to sit down and listen to the two CDs while following the score, in preparation for the Sing Along on Sunday at the American Cathedral. This I sat down to do after N left to meet the family at the Gare du Nord, unable to believe that I had over an hour all to myself just to devote to Handel. It was all too good to be true however; after about 20 minutes N rang saying that there was no train listed at the time Claire had said; could I find Dan’s parents’ phone number in his address book and ask them to check?

There was no number in his book; just the address, so I spent some time vainly trying to find the number of an International Directory Enquiries (in phone books mostly dating from 1998) with the Messiah going on valiantly in the background; N phoned again and said couldn’t I use BT on the Internet, as I had done before. I couldn’t get into the Internet, and when I at last found a relevant French phone number, there was only a recorded message saying I could now find the information on the Internet! Eventually N and all the guests turned up - the train had existed all along; no-one knew why it wasn’t on the Arrivals board. And I had listened to some of the first half of Messiah.

They only stayed the weekend; not long but perhaps enough with a small person in an apartment, the dark days and bad weather, and the impossibility of going anywhere in the car as there was no car seat for Charlotte. She not surprisingly had matured a lot since we last saw her, speaking very eloquently and playing on her own a lot of the time. The highlight of the weekend was a visit from the Palmers for Saturday afternoon tea; Charlotte and Daren looked at each other a bit suspiciously; apparently he didn’t know many girls, certainly not any who spoke English. I had done some baking at LNL, had bought some biscuits and Malika brought a cake, so I think all the grown-ups enjoyed it.

Afterwards we watched a video of the film Fantasia which Charlotte found quite captivating apart from saying “Where’s Mickey Mouse?” every few minutes. When she was in bed we watched Porterhouse Blue; Dan and Claire knew the story and we hadn’t seen it for some time. On the Saturday morning we had all gone for a walk to the Basilique and seen a wedding party arrive at the Hotel de Ville - and to Carrefour and a playground, and on Sunday morning Dan and Charlotte went out on their own, to fetch patîsseries for lunch and to see the market.

After Sunday lunch - roast chicken, stuffing, roast potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli & gravy, and the said patîsseries - we all set out together, me towards the American Cathedral and the others, having decided against the animated shop windows, to the Zoo at Vincennes. I was far too early, and when I came out of the metro at Georges V it was raining, so spent time looking at the Champs Elysées and in particular the Drugstore Publicis next to the Arc de Triomphe and the bookshop there.

I arrived in good time at the Cathedral, and they seemed pleased I had my own score. It was a long while since I had been in such an environment, and was amused at the overheard pieces of conversation, just like one always hears before choral events or rehearsals. Most people seemed to be either French or American, but there were a few English accents. The central aisles were divided into four sections for sopranos, altos, tenors and basses, and the few members of the “audience” were at the sides. I talked to a chatty French lady on my right, who commented on my accent and said I was “de vrai”, whether she meant for Handel and the Messiah or as opposed to all the Americans, I don’t know. On my left was a very tall, very blonde young French woman, a member of the Paris Choral Society, sponsors of the event.

It was only when I’d arrived that I saw that we were to sing just Part I of the Messiah, plus the Hallelujah Chorus. The conductor - in residence at the cathedral, and very good - took us through all the usual things to remember, in both French and English, and introduced the soloists and the organist, and also said that it was an annual event; for the fifteenth year running. Must look out for it next year. I thoroughly enjoyed the singing, although noticing that my breathing was not what it was, and that the trills needed some work. I was certainly doing much better then the lady next to me; the young woman the other side sang the notes well enough, but with a very French accent - I had forgotten this syndrome which I then remembered from the Saint-Denis chorale - trying to sing properly pronounced English words while everyone else is singing them wrongly is not easy! There were forms to fill in if one was interested in singing Parts II and III at a later date; I left my details and have since received an acknowledgment by e-mail.

We ended by singing the Hallelujah Chorus twice, also a tradition apparently, and all went out into the dark and rain. The weather was exactly the same last December when I had gone to the Carol Service; I must try and have a look at the place one day in the summer! At least I saw the Champs Elysées and the Arc de Triomphe with all their Christmas lights.

C, D and C set off for the Gare du Nord in the middle of Monday morning, accompanied by N; we exchanged Christmas presents, and wished them well for the arrival of the newest member of the family due in February. I stripped beds, tidied a little and wiped sticky door handles and when N came back we had a quiet lunch and collapsed gratefully on to the sofa. He had been as far as FNAC and bought up-to-date maps of the Paris suburbs and of the RER train system; the ones we had been consulting were about 10 years out of date; we need current ones if we are to make proper decisions. We spent the afternoon looking at the new maps and the previous house magazines in the light of the new maps.

By this time N was beginning to change his mind about both the piano and the lits placards, and thinking about Saint Germain-en-Laye as a place to look for an apartment. That evening we saw a useful house programme on TV; the, kind I have seen countless times in Britain, but never before in France. It dealt with a house that would not sell, and advised the owners to get rid of personal items and bring it up to date. I could see that might help a lot with the apartment at Saint-Denis; N was not so sure. One always thinks that if one likes certain things oneself then how could any prospective buyers not love them too?

Leaving the apartment at Saint-Denis on Tuesday morning was fraught as usual. The big front door was locked, but even if it had been open the car would not have got in as the pavement was blocked by Ursuline dustbins awaiting emptying; I don‘t think we have ever tried to leave at that time in the morning before. Once we were safely in the car with all our luggage, laundry, Habitat stools, the viola, Christmas presents, left-over food and butterfly net and assorted other items being relegated to LNL, N said did I fancy going via Saint Germain-en-Laye, which seemed like a great idea. Unlike the previous Thursday the weather was bright and sunny; with not much traffic on the roads.

Neither of us had been to Saint Germain-en-Laye before, although we knew it was rather expensive and “sought-after”, but we were unprepared for the magnificent château in the middle of the old town, right next to the RER station. After driving round a few times we parked deep in an underground car park and then walked around; there were lots of very nice expensive shops with well-heeled customers and I reflected that I would need an increase in my dress allowance if I was to live there. (“But you don’t have a dress allowance ….” said N; “Exactly,” I said.) We also saw a good big market, and visited a very helpful estate agent. He explained that none of the properties in the old town had parking as they were all too old, and that in any case there were never very many on the market. He advised us to look at an area called Bel Air, where the prices were lower - with parking, a bus ride away from the old town. There was also a station there linked with Saint-Lazare, which would make getting to and from La Neuve-Lyre very much easier. (This had been the case with other properties west of Paris which we had read about, and I thought was a great advantage.)

We gathered information from outside other agents and then decided it was time for lunch in a nice cosy little restaurant, and then drove over to Bel Air, very modern and seemingly a long way away. The only plus seemed to be that all the streets were named after composers! We drove back to LNL - not that far as we were on the right side of Paris - and N decide that a pied-à-terre in Paris should be just that, not another country property. I had thought this all along. His definition of “Paris” is not quite the same as mine however; I wouldn’t just limit myself to addresses within arondissements, I count anything on the metro line as Paris and would be very happy there. We did agree though, that Saint Germain-en-Laye was a wonderful new discovery which merited visiting often.

Saturday 15 December 2007

We got back to discover lots of post: a few Christmas cards, one or two parcels and lots of reading material - London Review of Books, CAM Magazine (one each) and the latest issue of Maisons Normandes, the latter very strange after looking at so many pictures of modern Paris flats. There was also the December catalogue from the frozen food company - I perused it in bed that night and they rang the next day for my order, which was delivered this morning. All very efficient. With the delivery came a free Johnny Hallyday CD; last time it was a not-very-useful recipe book. N said he hoped I would not listen to the CD while he is around; I said it was important to listen as it is French Culture! I see that in January there is a free white china cake plate with all orders; much more practical.

And the new stools are just right under the kitchen table, I’m pleased to say.

Monsieur P the carpenter arrived on Wednesday morning for the payment of his bill for the verandah door and the new little window in the second outhouse, unfortunately a lot more than either of us remembered, but we agreed again that the door was necessary and well worth it, and nothing else so large needs doing, touch wood. He kissed me on arriving and departing; I hope we will still continue to see something of him even though we have no more large projects for him.

On Thursday a whole sheaf of Christmas cards arrived together from Cambridge; I think the senders must have all done them last weekend and got them in the post on Monday!

The house took some time to warm up as for much of the time since Tuesday temperatures have been very little above freezing with thick white frosts. Yesterday morning we set off to Bernay for the car service; this was due for 9.00 so we were up early in the dark, and expected the roads to be icy, but fortunately they were dry. (The car was being serviced in Bernay as it is now a year old and the Saint- Denis garage has closed down.) We had two hours to fill in until the car was ready, so walked to the Post Office and to Petite Italie where we stocked up and then had a welcome hot chocolate in the Café de la Gare before going on to our usual supermarket. Afterwards N walked back to the garage while I waited - an hour! - with the shopping in the supermarket café with a newspaper. Amongst other interesting things, I read that this time last year the temperature was 11 degrees. Also, we now have all next week’s TV programmes, lists of Christmas markets and some unusual recipes for topinembours.

N is now looking at properties in the Sèvres, Boulogne-Billancourt, Asnières, Courbevoie, Epinay and Enghien areas, and has decided after all to bring the grand piano to LNL, about which I am very pleased. He has also brought the viola and wooden music stand down to the salon and decided it will become the “music” room straight away because of the acoustics. I will clear a shelf in the large built-in cupboard next to the fireplace for all the music which will come from Paris with the piano. (But not before Christmas ….) The cupboard must be one of the very oldest parts of the house, and is currently filled with all the things that used to be in my loft - Christmas decorations, old photos - framed and in albums - LPs and pieces of china not wanted at present.

This afternoon while I was sitting here at the computer there was a ring at the garden gate and Robert Urset was there; especially welcome as when it rang yesterday afternoon it was only the local firemen selling calendars (a French tradition!) He was lucky as we had just decided to eat our panettone cake bought yesterday at Petite Italie, and not save it till Christmas. N also not surprisingly picked his brains about buying and selling properties in the Paris area and I told him we had been to Bon Marché again. He said he would call us in January and invite us to dinner. Perhaps after all we are getting somewhere with making new friends?

Thursday 6 December 2007

Over breakfast last Wednesday morning, before setting off to drive to Saint-Denis we fell, as always, to discussing the inconvenience of the main gate, and whether or not it would be locked and the difficulties of having to go and park the car and walk back from the car park afterwards. N also mentioned again, as he often does, the very high service charges he pays for the apartment at Saint-Denis, because of its being a historical monument in need of repair, and somehow we arrived at the conclusion that perhaps the time had come to sell the apartment and buy something a little more modern, with lower charges and an integral parking space.

We continued the discussion on our car journey - the gate was unlocked but there was a car parked in front of it, and a van trying to gain access too. After lunch we walked round to the car park again, and drove to the big supermarket Auchan to stock up ready for the first of our three lots of guests, due the next day. We unloaded the shopping in three instalments, and I took it all in and up the stairs, and N took the car back to the car park again. By this time we were quite sure we wanted to start looking for something more convenient, and when he got home he had several house magazines for perusal plus an appointment with an agent to come and value the apartment at 2.00 the next day!

This meant that the cleaning and tidying I had planned before Madeleine's and Caroline's arrival on Thursday evening became even more thorough and necessary; I had done so much pre-house-viewing cleaning at Ainsworth Street that it still came very naturally to me, and I remembered the importance of flowers and made a special trip to the florist.

By the time our agent arrived - a nice efficient young woman called Audrey, who reminded N of Madeleine - all was clear and tidy; just as well as she took a good number of photographs. We remembered to give her a copy of our Lexique of English/French house-buying terms and N encouraged her to show all her colleagues! I said good bye as N took her down to show her the cellar; and said she would be in contact with a valuation in a few days.

Madeleine and Caroline were due at the gare du Nord just before 7.00, so we laid the table for supper before we left to meet them by car - yet another inconvenient trip to the car park!

On Friday morning M, C and I set off for the first item on their list - the decorated and animated Christmas shop windows at the Grands Magasins at Haussmann. (Ever since their first visit here two years ago these have become a firm annual favourite.) The windows were excellent this year; all white and silver and snowy with a Scandinavian theme, and I hoped that three-year-old Charlotte would be able to see them the week after. Afterwards we went into Printemps itself, also to C & A, Lafayette Maison and Casa, stopping for a traditional lunch on the first floor of a nearby café. We then went on to somewhere new for a change; a short walk to the Place de la Madeleine to visit the various departments of the wonderful food shop Fauchon, and the nearby Maille mustard shop. We were all fascinated by what Caroline called "draught mustard"; pots filled with different mustards the way mugs are filled with beer, and Madeleine said she would take the opportunity to bring her empty pot back for filling next time. We took a few photos of our Madeleine next to various signs with her name on, in both the street and the metro and then made our way home, stopping en route at the Carrefour supermarket in Saint-Denis.

M & C went out for dinner on Friday evening to meet up with some friends of Caroline's who were also visiting Paris, so on Saturday we got up a little later with the intention of visiting first of all an exhibition at the Louvre. N came with us on the RER as far as Châtelet and went on to the stamp album shop, and we took the metro on to the Louvre, stopping on the way to look at the platforms at Tuileries metro station.

The platforms of the Tuileries station were decorated with large posters in the year 2000 to celebrate 100 years of the metro, and are divided into decades with pictures, photos and writing of memorable people, events, transport, history, and music of each decade. I have looked at them from time to time while passing through, but never all at once. It took a while to see it all though, and we arrived at the Louvre somewhat later than planned. It was not long since I had been there last time - in September to see Souvenir de Mortefontaine - but Caroline had never been and was very impressed, especially with the great glass Pyramid and the huge area underneath, even better with sunlight shining through it.

Museum visiting made me feel as though I was back in Vienna again, getting tickets, leaving coats; especially as the exhibition we came to see consisted of Biedermeier furniture from Vienna and Prague; one I had heard advertised on the radio. It was a small exhibition - of furniture, textiles, porcelain and pictures, and was worth going to simply because I was able to find out yet more about the origin of Biedermeier! Apparently he was character in a Munich newspaper who liked living at home very quietly with no interest in politics or society, hence the homely cosy connotation. I wished I could have told the young man in the furniture depot museum in Vienna.

Caroline said, quite rightly, that having arrived at the Louvre and paid to get in we shouldn't leave it without having seen a few other things, particularly the Mona Lisa. This was easy to find, and displayed far more carefully and prominently than when I had first seen it on a school trip many years ago. We walked through a lot more Leonardo da Vinci and a lot of other Italian Renaissance paintings, and past the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and could have happily seen a lot more, but it was already 2.15 and we hadn't had lunch, and wanted to visit several other things in Paris. I said they should come and visit the Louvre again on another visit, but meanwhile told Caroline that she could find plenty more Italian Renaissance in the V & A in London.

We went next door to the shopping centre, the Galeries du Louvre, where Madeleine wanted to see the shop where I had bought her birthday present, Fragonard. First of all though we had lunch in a large gallery of restaurants where I hadn't been before; a central area of tables with little kiosks all round serving food of different nationalities. M & C ate Mexican, and I had French, where there was no queue! After visiting the afore-mentioned Fragonard, and a large Sephora, a big hobbies shop and the two Louvre museum shops, we caught a bus outside in the road going though the Louvre gardens and went on to the Bon Marché store in the south of Paris. We had hoped for a sit-down and some nice views on the bus, but it was very crowded with steamed-up windows.

Once at Bon Marché we all three bought Christmas cards in the basement, which required a lot of queuing in the over-heated store. After looking at toys and haberdashery - in the haberdashery I found myself queuing up behind the same family as in the basement, like some bad dream - we went to the Grande Epicerie next door, where Caroline spent a lot of time shopping and M and I sat down and had tea, joining in briefly with the shopping at the end. Finally at about 6.00 we phoned N and told him we were on our way home by metro from Sèvres-Babylone, a fairly direct journey.

He had prepared foie gras, confit de canard (out of a tin, delicious) and potatoes, and at M's request added a jar of peas and carrots, plus fruit tarts from the freezer. This was all very welcome after our long day. After dinner M, C and I played Scrabble - a luxury French set of N's, but we played in English. M won fairly decisively; I decided the only way I am going to get better at Scrabble is to play often, but with better luck I hope; I had first of all a Q, then a Z and an X, followed by a whole "hand" of vowels!

Next day the plan was to go the the Marché aux Puces (Flea Market) at Saint-Ouen, but the weather forecast for Sunday had not been looking good for several days. We set off for the bus in the rain, and spent the first half an hour or so looking at damp stalls and trying to keep dry. N went ahead and booked a table for lunch at the only restaurant in the market, where he had taken me years ago, and where the entertainment consists of a (fairly good) singer of Edith Piaf songs. The same singer was still there, although now looking considerably older than her picture outside the restaurant (don't we all?) and M was pleased as she had recently seen the new film of Piaf's life - I am still trying to catch up with it - and has subsequently bought several CDs.

The food was warm and filling, and was served quickly, and the place soon filled up. C said if you described it to friends at home they would not believe it, and M said she had never before been in a restaurant where the staff shouted at each other so much. We managed to string out our stay by having desserts and tea and coffee and by the time we left the place was packed and another singer had taken over, whom M, N and I thought looked very like Marie-Antoinette, our neighbour in Normandy.

Eventually we had to go out again into the wind and the rain, but managed to find parts of the market under cover, and spent some time looking at buttons, jewellery, cinema memorabilia, old clothes and books. Both C and I bought a book each in English and M bought some cinema postcards. N tried to persuade me to buy a book containing amongst other things writings by Proust not contained in A la recherche du Temps Perdu, called La Jalousie and dealing with the same characters, but it was 60 euros, which I though was too much.

By the time we got back to Saint-Denis the wind was very strong and the rain very wet, and after taking a detour to find a boulangerie still open we were very pleased to get home and stay home for the rest of the day. Over tea we all took it in turns to read one of the short stories from my new book; an English translation of The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant, a story I first read many years ago, with a clever twist at the end. (This was a sort of continuation of our Sunday afternoon reading; we had finished The Wind in the Willows the week before, and are waiting to start N's next choice when we get back next week.)

M & C's train back to London was due to leave early on Monday afternoon, so we spent the morning in Saint-Denis; including the Virgin Megastore, where they loved the toys and the stationery, the local C & A and some last minute shopping in Carrefour. After a speedy lunch, and saying goodbye to N, I went with them to the Gare du Nord, and waved them off.

It seemed a waste of time and a train ticket to go straight back home again, so I went one station further on to the Forum des Halles shopping centre, to Habitat where I bought two red plastic Tam-Tam stools to go under the kitchen table at LNL. I have been looking at these for some time, and wondering how to get them to LNL; but they weren't that difficult to carry in a very large plastic bag, awkward, but not heavy. It was a good opportunity as I wasn't carrying anything else, and after having been 10 euros each whenever I have looked before, they had gone up to 12 euros.

Thursday 22 November 2007
After arriving back from Vienna on the Monday evening we only stayed in Saint-Denis until Wednesday, trying to warm up the apartment and having trouble working out what day it was. I did a little washing and took my coat and N’s suit to the dry cleaner’s and on Tuesday evening we watched the second episode of a new French TV adaptation of War and Peace, having missed the first part as we were away. We have since seen the third episode here in Normandy and it gets better and better; ever since last Tuesday I keep wondering how they’re all getting on at the Battle of Borodino.
We eventually left Saint-Denis later than planned; N went to fetch the car from the municipal car park and I came out about 20 minutes later to open the big street doors, and waited there for the best part of an hour! All sorts of possibilities were running though my head but when he and the car finally turned up, it transpired that the battery had run flat during the ten days or so in the car park and it had taken him some time to find some to help.
While I was standing out there the gardienne handed me an envelope containing the bill for the broken window back in September; we had expected to find this in the post box when we arrived in Saint-Denis the week before - when we didn’t, N wrote to the Portuguese handyman asking him to post it to LNL; I suspect that the gardienne had had it all the time. The bill was rather larger than we expected, and as I had said I would pay it, was glad it hadn’t come before I bought my new jackets! The gardienne also said we could sign and take the famous door entry « badges », which I did; if I hadn’t been hanging around outside for an hour would we ever have had the bill and the badges??
Once back at LNL it took even longer to warm up the house than at Saint-Denis, as our arrival coincided with a sharp drop in temperature; we had thought Vienna was a lot colder than Paris but now it was just as cold in Normandy! Between zero and three degrees. We kept closing internal doors, shut the bedroom shutters at night, discussed having thicker «winter» curtains at the bedroom windows, and set the heating to come on earlier in the morning and switch off later at night. However, it’s much milder again now, and as the weather forecaster said, winter is over for the moment and we’re back to autumn, and we have turned down the heating by a few degrees.
But as is often the case when we’re away for a week or two, the seasons have rolled around a little; Halloween and the All Saints Day chrysanthemums are over; there is a wreath on the War Memorial left over from Armistice Day, and even the Beaujolais Nouveau has arrived in the village shop! And this week the Christmas lights have been put up in the village streets. Amazingly, there were four roses in bloom in the garden, which I cut and brought indoors; I think they must be the last, but the Christmas roses are out!
We have had one trip into Bernay so far, for supermarket shopping and to book the car in for its one-year service at the Renault garage there, as the garage in Saint-Denis where it was bought has just closed down. We also called in at Vive le Jardin! and admired the Christmas displays and had few words with the cat; I bought a straw frame and pins to make a door wreath like last year, and N optimistically bought a nectarine tree and some more currant bushes, to plant in the potager as those under the cherry tree had not been very happy or productive. This was on one of the coldest days, so the new tree and bushes had to wait in the shelter of the garage until yesterday when it was mild enough to plant them.
Whether due to standing outside in the cold for an hour, or perhaps to some Viennese germs, or to leaving all my vitamins behind in Normandy, I developed a cold towards the end of last week, and yesterday woke up with a breathless cough. This time when N suggested going to see the doctor I agreed, and went along in time for the afternoon surgery. It was only the second time I had ever been, so handed him the form to sign and stamp, agreeing to be my GP, which I then sent back to the office in Bernay. (All this paperwork had taken place over a year ago, so I had to refresh my memory!) The doctor was nicer than I remembered from last time, and made no mention of blood tests or anything else extra - made various « English » jokes; about the weather and when I said no, I was not taking any medication, said « Except tea! » He took my blood pressure which was fine and spent a long time listening to my back and chest while I breathed heavily, and then gave me my first French prescription. So I went straight along to the pharmacie and used my Carte Vitale for the first time. (And unlike Boots, they didn’t say come back in 20 minutes, but went and got it straight away.) I have three different kinds of médicaments to dissolve in water; none of them taste very nice. It’s a good job we have a large collection of odd small glasses as I take them three times a day. I do feel slightly better, though.
On Monday we had a delivery of frozen fish, from a frozen food company who had got in touch about a month ago. It seemed a good idea, as we can only get it when we go to a supermarket or to L‘Aigle market, and I was used to having individually wrapped pieces of fish in the freezer when I lived in Cambridge. There is a catalogue with lots of other products, a bit like those at Picard, the freezer company just round the corner in Saint-Denis.
Friday 23 November 2007
Since coming back we have been keeping abreast of the transport and other strikes going on in Paris and on all the main train lines and being very glad that we are here and not needing Paris transport for the moment. We are also hoping that things will still be running smoothly when our Paris visitors arrive next month.
I remembered enjoying a Carol Service at the American Cathedral in Paris last December, and that the Cathedral had a very good website, so decided to check the date of this year’s service; as I suspected it takes place just before Christmas when we shall be back here in Normandy. While looking at their calendar however, amongst various things which didn’t interest me at all - like Sung Eucharist and Alcoholics Anonymous - my eye was caught by a Messiah Sing-Along! This sounded much more entertaining and is when we are in Paris, on a Sunday afternoon. Not a lot of singing, mainly just joining in the choruses, but more than I’ve had for a long time and I do love the music.
I have now finished reading the biography of Sisi, Empress of Austria, and have been pleased at all the Austrian and European history I have learned along the way. It was rather depressing towards the end just before her death, when she had become so tired and old and ill and slightly mad, and had lost all her beauty, and was about the age I am now! I’m afraid Kafka’s Die Verwandlung never did get finished and is not likely to be for the moment; I am currently catching up with two back editions of The London Review of Books before starting on the final volume of Les Thibault, where WW1 is just about to start. N is reading poems by Robert Burns.
As always, we have been thinking about trips for the future. N has booked Boulogne/Dover ferries at the beginning of February for a trip to Ipswich to visit my family, and had been talking about another trip for March, possibly Italy, when one morning he handed me a printed e-mail to read and said « I’ve been summoned to Switzerland. » He has not been to Switzerland to play in the string quartet weeks at all this year; his friends Simone and Jean have been, but he began to wonder whether or not he could still play well enough, and recently has done hardly any playing or practising at all, saying there was nothing to practise for! So when the message came saying he was needed to take part in a Brahms quartet at the end of March, I said it must be Fate.
He then asked if I would like to go too this time, having always said although that the scenery, the flowers, the mountains and the wooden chalets are beautiful, there is absolutely nothing at all for a « hanger-on » to do. I said yes, I would like to go and will look on it as a sort of Enforced Reading Week. It will also mean learning some more German, I’m afraid, if only to speak at meal times. (N said it was a pity I couldn’t enrol in a yodelling class or a cuckoo clock-making course.....)
We were just getting used to this idea, and N had embarked on an intensified programme of several hours’ viola practise a day, when yesterday afternoon I received an e-mail from the woman I’d contacted some months ago about feeding cats in Tuscany this winter - the people she had lined up were looking doubtful and were we still available???? We weren’t really, but we consulted diaries and sucked pencils and discussed it at length, and I sent a message back saying we could really only offer the second half of February if she was really pushed, and she thanked us for replying quickly and said she had other people on her back-up list she would try first. N thought it was important to stay on her back-up list for the future.
This morning we rang Monsieur B our « TV engineer » to see whether we could fetch our (hopefully) repaired hoover and radio. He said he had been able to repair the hoover, so we planned to fetch that and my framed sampler from the shop in L’Aigle in the same trip. Unfortunately the car wouldn’t start again, so N went to see the people at the garage over the road (the first time we have ever needed them) while I filled in time by going to the cash machine, getting some eggs from the traiteur and posting the letters. By the time I got back, the engine was going; N said they had been very friendly and helpful but he hadn’t any money to pay them - we stopped at the garage on our way, they charged 5 euros!
This meant that we needed to stop at the Renault garage in L’Aigle; we collected the hoover first, (the radio was too old to repair) and then went into L’Aigle to the garage and I walked across town to collect the sampler with which I am really pleased. I have hung it on the kitchen wall, where it looks very good. Anyway, when I got back to the garage they were talking about replacing the battery - fortunately still under guarantee - as apparently the car has so many computerized features that it uses a lot of battery even when it isn’t going anywhere, particularly if not driven very often, as is sometimes our case. All this took half and hour or more, so by the time we eventually got home it was lunchtime, and the end of a very eventful morning. While passing Monsieur P’s turning on the way home, we discussed whether or not to let him know we were going away next week, as we hadn’t heard from him about the new verandah door and outhouse window frame. But happily he called in this afternoon and can come and fit them on Tuesday morning, the day before we leave on Wednesday. He had cycled all the way and looked very cold and pinched, the way I used to feel when cycling in this kind of weather. More bills, says N, but the new door will make such a difference, not only to the verandah but to the whole of the back of the house, especially when one arrives via the garage. I am hoping we will have lots of visitors next spring and summer; this year there were not many visitors or sunshine after the brilliant beginning in April, so it’s nice on these grey damp November days to think there might be lots of people here in the garden with us next summer.
Monday 26 November 2007
A nice quiet ordinary weekend; we lit the fire yesterday and finished reading The Wind in the Willows after roast chicken for lunch and baked apples stuffed with mincemeat. In fact the two weeks we have had here since returning from Paris and Vienna have been nicely quiet and dull; just as well as we are going back to Paris soon for the first two of three lots of December visitors. This morning I did my exercise DVD for the first time in a long while - first we were away and then I was too full of a cough and cold, but am getting better fast, thanks to the exercises and to colouring my hair, I feel almost human again!
Tuesday 27 November 2007
We saw two excellent television programmes yesterday. The first, in between tea and dinner on Mezzo (the Classical Music channel) was a documentary about Mahler, narrated by Leonard Bernstein in English, and was an old BBC programme. It was fascinating for anyone who had just read Mahler’s life and just visited Vienna! The second programme, in the evening on the History Channel, was about Archimedes; mainly concerning how his ideas were written down in the tenth century on paper later used for a prayer book, and how this manuscript turned up at auction in London, after having been bought in Turkey in about 1910 and lain in a drawer in Paris for several decades. A team in America are now trying to decipher it.
This morning we got up very early in the dark and Monsieur P’s man arrived at about 8.35. He finished in the early afternoon, and as expected the new door looks wonderful - he put in a new door frame too, and it all fits remarkably well. It came with a new lock and key - we had hoped to keep the old lock, and not need new keys - but we can see that this looks much better. It is already much warmer and less draughty in the verandah. The new little window frame in the second outhouse took very little time, and that is a great improvement too. So far Monsieur P has not been for his bill - he is usually very prompt and knows we are going away tomorrow, so we expect him any time now.
While this was going on this morning I went to the hairdressers, and amongst other things heard how they had both cooked the parsnip we had given them last time; a little like Ready, Steady, Cook, I think they must have shared it. They said it had an interesting taste; I wonder if that means they liked it! While I was sitting there, a lorry drove into the village square carrying two huge Christmas trees, ready to be put either side of the church door.
Afterwards I went to the Post Office to make sure I got all the stamps ready for my Christmas cards here, to avoid having to queue for them in Paris, and also to ask Estelle the postmistress to look after all our post while we are away, to save it getting damp in the box outside. She noted it and said we must tell Nicolas the postman; I said we’d already told him, so now everyone knew! Once again, I wonder how we would have managed in a village without a Post Office. Other village news: The traiteur has a notice in the window saying they have just won a prize for their boudin blanc (white sausage) and I am now on Bonjour terms with the man at the garage.

Friday 16 November 2007
We spent just a few days in Saint-Denis before going to Vienna; as we arrived the centre looked strangely empty of Rugby World Cup posters and paraphernalia, and there was a large space where the giant screens had been. Previously it had been a bus station - what next?
We had trouble driving up to the apartment as the big street door was locked, perhaps because it was a public holiday, and N had to go and find someone with a key. All this was quite apart from the new entry « badges »; these were not yet available but we were assured by the gardienne that we would be able to get in with our keys as usual when we came back from Vienna late at night the week after!
I managed to buy two red jackets prior to my trip; a silky patterned one with a vaguely Japanese look about it, (from a shop in Montmartre full of very fussy wedding outfits) to wear to the opera and other evening concerts, and a slightly more casual boiled wool one from Jacqueline Riu. I was pleased to see several fashion shops full of bright red clothes, as it is one of my favourite colours. On the Saturday I also had my eyebrows done, bought our train tickets to the airport (Roissy Charles de Gaulle) ready for Monday and went to FNAC for a street plan of Vienna and a small German phrase book. The new station at Saint-Denis is at long last partially finished; may be complete by about Christmas. N stayed at home and put his collection of euro coins into some very fine new albums designed especially for the purpose which had arrived by post at LNL and been brought with us to Saint-Denis where the coin collection was.
In the evening we went round for apéritifs to the Palmers’ new apartment; a modern block in a quiet street near the Basilique, on two floors with a wonderful large terrace overlooking communal gardens. We stayed there a long time waiting to meet their friend Stuart who never turned up; a bit like waiting for Godot.
On Sunday morning we took the metro to the Boulevard de la Chapelle where there should have been a vide-greniers (car boot sale) but there wasn't, so we had a nice walk instead, much the same area as I had covered on Friday afternoon during my jacket shopping. The afternoon was spent in last minute pre-journey tasks, and reading aloud some more of « The Wind in the Willows » which we had brought with us. (When I had put it into my bag together with Kafka‘s « The Metamorphosis »; I thought what a very wide-ranging selection of reading....)
We set off early Monday morning in the dark and arrived at the airport in reasonable time; N was a little surprised to find that the flights he had booked with Air Berlin were now with an airline called Niki. The lettering and the oval surrounding it were red which made it look very like the Kit-Kat logo, so from then on he referred to it as Kit-Kat Airways.
Anyway, the plane was newer and smarter than many of the low cost planes we had been used to; there were free newspapers and magazines and I had a very large cooked breakfast to make up for only having had a cup of tea before leaving. We took a bus from the airport to our hotel and were pleased to find that we could check in, although it was only about midday.
I remembered that what I particularly liked about Germanic hotels were the varied and copious breakfasts and the quilts on the beds instead of sheets and blankets, and was not disappointed! The hotel was excellent; in a quiet little street near the Cathedral, with helpful staff and lots of available information. We had a large cosy room on the fourth floor, warm and high enough up to catch any sun that was going. Just outside on the landing was the hotel’s only public computer, convenient for N who kept checking e-mail messages every day. For the first half of the week no-one else seemed to be using it, and then it was occupied almost all the time.
Every morning when we took the lift down to breakfast - bacon, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, cakes, savoury pâtés, cheeses and pumpernickel bread available every day, in addition to all the usual fruit, cereals, juices, yoghurts, other kinds of bread and rolls, hot drinks, jams and honey - the lift was full of very cold air picked up on its journey down to the front door. I found the weather the only disadvantage during our stay, apart from Sunday of which more later; it was a good few degrees colder than Paris, mostly with very cold strong winds and a lot of icy rain. We were glad we had taken all our warmest clothes, including hats; N had managed to leave his gloves behind in the car but somehow survived without buying any more.
That first day we walked around the streets near the Stephansdom, (St Stephen’s Cathedral) looked at all the shops in the Kärtnerstrasse. In the Cathedral I thought of Mozart arriving to work there and lodging nearby and we saw a poster for a Mass by Michael Haydn on Sunday morning, and decided we would go. We had lunch at a modern café in the Kärtnerstrasse, N having his first viener schnitzel of the stay; I was still full of breakfast and had a sandwich. We then strolled along to the opera house and found we were just in time to join a guided tour starting at three o'clock. We were pleased at this, as just before leaving we had heard we had been allotted tickets for the Saturday evening from the waiting list - Arabella by Richard Strauss. It was a very thorough tour and took in all the big reception rooms, the Imperial Box, the splendid auditorium and backstage and I was particularly pleased to find much to do with Mahler, whose musical career there I had just finished reading about; his piano, various programmes, photographs, busts and portraits and a well-thumbed score used by him, very grubby, full of his notes and sellotape! (I’m not sure but I think it was The Marriage of Figaro.) We then came across the Café Mozart, a delightful place, warm and welcoming and full of traditional waiters, coffees, cakes and newspapers on their wooden frames. I was fascinated by a poster on the wall portraying every kind of coffee, hot chocolate and cake available and bought a copy to take home. We were also interested to read that the café was a favourite of Graham Green’s and had featured in the film The Third Man. After a rest at the hotel (we had got up very early) we had dinner in a sort of bier-keller next door. This time it was my turn for the schnitzel and N had a huge tureen full of soup to himself containing dumplings and noodles and all manner of indefinable things.
For our second day we had already booked a guided tour on foot, and were collected from our hotel by minibus which took us (via several other hotels) to an assembly point by the station, going past lots of other interesting sights on the way. Having found our guide and other tour members we were driven by the same minibus to the Imperial Crypt where the tour proper started. Our guide was very entertaining and knowledgeable, and told us a great deal about the members of the Hapsburg family whose ornate metal coffins we saw in the crypt. The second part of the tour took in the Spanish Riding School - a building uncannily like the Senate House in Cambridge; two storeys tall with a white decorated ceiling and very high windows and a balcony round the inside edge at second floor level. Unlike the Senate House however, there was a royal box at one end and sand all over the floor, and we watched the horses take their « morning exercise » mounted by their well-dressed riders. Unfortunately no photos allowed, so as not to frighten the horses.
The third and final part of the tour, and the most interesting, I thought, dealt with Sisi, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, wife of Emperor Franz Josef. Until then all I knew about Sisi, thanks to a back copy of the magazine Maisons Normandes, was that she had briefly stayed in a château in Normandy in the 1880’s. We were taken through her imperial apartments, saw dresses, furniture, her exercise equipment, (!) cosmetics, diets, scales, portraits and photographs and a copy of her own private railway carriage. By the end of the tour when we thanked our guide and went off to find some well-deserved lunch and a sit-down, I was determined to find a book about Sisi (preferably not in German) so that I could find out more. It was difficult to avoid her as one went about Vienna; she seemed to be a very valuable tourist attraction.
The first café we came cross was the Griensteidl. We learned that it made sense to arrive for lunch not long after 12.00 as by 1.00 there were queues of people waiting for tables and keen to get in from the cold. Our tour (as we had hoped) had given us lots of ideas of other places to visit and after lunch we set off for the Albertina gallery which we had glimpsed the day before from the Café Mozart. It was well set out and contained a fine collection of modern art, but we realised that two long outings in one day were not good, either for our brains or for our feet! We went back to the hotel for a rest, stopping to look in a little supermarket nearby and buy some of our favourite Ritter chocolate, and a couple of packets of goulash soup mix. That evening we had supper in the opera café; on the large screen on the wall we were able to watch a live relay of the performance of Arabella from the auditorium, giving us an idea of what to expect on Saturday. During the interval the café suddenly became a lot more crowded, as well-heeled opera-goers popped in for snacks.
The next art gallery on our list was the Kunsthistorisches Museum, containg collections of works built up over the centuries by the Hapsburgs. This involved taking the underground for the first time, which proved very simple; we invested in 3-day tickets also usable on trams and buses. N was very pleased to see quite a few paintings by the Bruegels; I enjoyed these too but was pleasantly surprised to find a painting of Suffolk by Thomas Gainsborough. The gallery was vast and took us all the morning; fortunately we came across a wonderfully decorated restaurant in the museum itself and after lunch found the Museum Shop. N bought several Christmas presents and I was delighted to find a definitive biography of Sisi translated into English! As we were due to go out in the evening and it was cold and windy we went back to the hotel; N wrote postcards and snoozed and I was very happy putting my feet up and reading the first three chapters of my new book. In fact this was such a good arrangement that we adopted it for most of the rest of our stay - out sightseeing first thing in the morning after a good breakfast and then after a café lunch back in the warm for a rest and a read; once I had the book to go back to it was a wonderful treat to be able to get on with it every afternoon. And towards the end of our stay we were out almost every evening. As N said, if we had been there in the summer we would probably have sat in nice gardens after lunch every day, but the weather was not conducive to being out long. Another factor was that although we were still in the same time zone, the sun rose and set about an hour earlier than in Paris, which made for very dark afternoons. N realised he had better get an absorbing book too, and came back with a German translation of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile.
On Wednesday evening we had tickets for a Mozart & Strauss concert at the Schönbrunn Palace, several underground stations away. On the way to the station we had supper at the Café Europa where we’d had lunch on our first day, reached Schönbrunn far too early so had drinks and a look round, noting that was where the young Mozart’s meeting with Empress Maria Theresa had taken place. N was little disappointed with the event, as instead of the promised orchestra there was only a sextet - although admittedly very good - and he maintained that the audience consisted mostly of badly dressed tourists! (We of course were wearing our best jackets.) As well as the sextet there were two dancers and two singers for various items of the programme, and after each item we could hear the howling wind whistling around the building. The programme ended with very good rendering of Strauss’ Blue Danube waltz, so that the next morning and for several others after it I woke up with the tune in my head, but I suppose this is only to be expected in Vienna. They played the Radetsky March as an encore; one of my favourite pieces, and I feel I know so much more about Radetsky now, having read about him in the Life of Mahler, and seen a bust of him on the guided tour.
Having changed trains on our way home on the underground, I caught sight on the platform of the two singers we had just been listening to, obviously on their way home too, with all their finery in carrier bags, as N said, looking quite ordinary and just like anybody else!
I wanted to visit the MAK museum (Museum für Angewandte Kunst; Applied Arts Museum) and N wanted to see the paintings by Klimt at the Belvedere Museum; the MAK museum was closed on Thursdays so we set off intending to go to the Belvedere, stopping to look at Mozart’s house near the cathedral, where we were due to go to a concert on Friday evening. We took the underground to Karlsplatz and noticed an exit sign to the Musikverein, the large impressive concert hall where the New Year’s Day concert takes place every year. Not surprisingly there were many posters outside; one advertising Mahler’s first symphony made me very excited at the possibility of hearing it in Vienna, but it was (a) all sold out and (b) on the same evening as we were going to the opera. In the end N managed to get tickets for Sunday; Zubin Mehta conducting a Florentine orchestra in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for wind instruments and Tchaikovsky’s Pathètique Symphony, both pieces I had got to know when N played them in the RATP orchestra in Paris and I had attended both final rehearsals and performances.
Feeling very pleased with ourselves we then went on to look at a Brahms memorial (pausing for photos of this and the Musikverein) and then looked at the Karlskirche, a very ornate Baroque church that N didn’t like at all; it was full of scaffolding and building improvement works and seemed to have some connection with Bruckner; though unfortunately our German wasn’t quite good enough to work out what.
We went back to trying to find our way to the Belvedere Museums, got lost round a Russian memorial and the French Embassy and eventually found the Belvedere gardens and fountains which seemed to have been designed by someone with a good working knowledge of the Château of Versailles. At last, after seeing many other paintings we finally came across the Klimts; as N said we had set off to see them first thing that morning and our mission was finally accomplished at 12.15! The gallery café and shop were good; I had a deliciously unusual carrot and ginger cream soup. We caught an old-fashioned tram outside, and stopped to look at some shops we had noticed earlier, the Ringstrasse Galerien, containing a Christmas market (throughout our stay we noticed little huts being erected for seasonal markets in various parts of the city.)
N asked me to do some research on finding a restaurant for dinner that evening, so I went downstairs and read the hotel notice board and decided on a well-recommended one in the Wipplingerstrasse, not far away but in a direction we had not yet explored. It was extremely difficult to find - first of all when we thought we had found number 34 there seemed to be some kind of formal reception going on, and coats were being taken in and guests proceeding upstairs. (N said we should have gone in too and pretended we were part of it; I wasn’t certain of our ability to do this in German.) N asked about the restaurant; no-one had heard of it. We then walked along the pavement and could see a restaurant down below through flat roof windows, but couldn’t work out how to get to it! N pushed open a door which led to the kitchens, and eventually when it had become like some sort of bad dream, we managed to find our way in by walking though a very elegant garden & interior décor boutique. And eventually sat down at a table!
It was almost empty - presumably no-one else could find the way in either - but very good Italian food very simply served on white plates on white cloths, with white candles and white roses. For the second time that day I had a lovely new unusual taste - vanilla caramel mousse with dates.
On Friday morning we set out to visit the rest of Schönbrunn Palace in the daylight and as before the weather was terrible and kept turning my umbrella inside out. (It had been slightly milder the day before.) Surprisingly it was very crowded, but after we had seen all the formal rooms on display inside, and the excellent shop where you could buy a paper wig guaranteed to make you look like Mozart in two minutes - which we resisted - tried to look at the gardens and outbuildings but gave up as it was so windy and so cold.
We took the underground back to the city centre, heading for the Café Central, from where Madeleine had bought us a chocolate cake in a wooden box during her visit to Vienna. It was an excellent café, once more we arrived early and did not have to queue; by this time there was horizontal driving rain and half an hour later it was very crowded and every time the door opened wind and rain blew in. We both had excellent warm soups; N had another large slice of their cake and pronounced it much better than sachertorte. I only had room for a very small but delicious chestnut and chocolate cake.
After spending the rest of the afternoon at our hotel, we set out at about 5.00 to visit Mozart’s house in the Domgasse, the only one of his many residences and lodgings in Vienna still in existence. The apartment was several floors up, and had apparently been refitted as a tourist attraction last year, with a shop and café and an animated filmstrip in the entrance showing Mozart arriving by carriage in Vienna in the snow. The apartment itself was almost empty which I found very moving; there were screens showing the relevant excerpts from the film Amadeus when Mozart père came to visit.
We bought a few things from the shop and went round the corner to another of Mozart’s residences known as the Figarohaus; the building still stands but the lodging - where he is reputed to have written The Marriage of Figaro - no longer exists. We had booked tickets for a chamber concert over the internet and arrived rather early to pick them up, so walked around the nearby streets for a while, taking in a marvellous kitchen shop where I bought a deep red mixing bowl which I had to keep carefully under my seat once we did get to the concert. (We realised the shop staff were anxious for us to leave as it was time to close the shop.) The « auditorium » - where Mozart himself had often played - was tiny, not much larger then a drawing room, and the walls and ceiling were decorated with beautiful Italianate designs. There were about 60 chairs tightly packed in rows and every time the door opened it was very cold; strange because it was impossible to see how or why the room was warm, as there was no sign of any kind of heating apparatus.
The programme consisted of several string quartets by Mozart and Haydn, played by an excellent quartet dressed in late 18th century costume, although without wigs; I felt they should have gone along and bought some from the Schönbrunn shop, certainly the violist and cellist, who were both very thin on top. During the interval N struck up a conversation with an American man sitting next to him, covering varied subjects as Vienna, George Bush, music, currency and travel.
Afterwards we had dinner at a very good Italian restaurant nearby, where there were photos on the walls of previous visits by Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Ricardo Muti and André Previn, to name but a few. I ate delicious pasta and N had goose and it was a temporary relief to be able to speak Italian instead of German, although very confusing again afterwards.
On Saturday morning we went to the MAK museum and were delighted to find admission was free on Saturdays. It was rather a strange place; had begun life under Emperor Franz Josef as a showcase for contemporary art and industry, and then diversified and expanded over the years to include modern collections and displays of textiles, china, glass and furniture. I always find china and furniture fascinating, but N wasn’t sure if he wanted to spend time looking at a lot of chairs, so spent time sitting on them instead, against the walls of the central galleries were modern metal-framed sofas covered with printed textiles. I was intrigued to see that one of the many chairs on display bore a distinct resemblance to mine - the one found in the garage at LNL, a bentwood chair with arms and a round seat which I had re-caned, which now lives beside the phone. The one in the museum was simply labelled « Vienna circa 1885 ».
The MAK museum shop was full of unusual things which were far too big to take home on the plane; I especially liked some vases in bright plain colours which turned out to be made of rubber; not to be clutched at when full of water and flowers, I think.
We then went on to inspect the nearby city air terminal, and decided it would be a good idea to check in there early for our flight home on Monday, rather than take the bus as we had on arrival. From there we had a look at the Rathaus district, which we hadn’t seen before, but there was very little to see - perhaps because it was the weekend - and once again the weather was far from pleasant so we ended up having lunch in a very authentic student bier-keller, which I didn’t like nearly as much as the cafés where you could look out of the windows.
In the afternoon I went shopping on my own in the Kärtnerstrasse, while N stayed at the hotel and at about 5.30 we set off for the opera house. It was far too wet to walk all the way in my satin shoes, so I wore boots and took the shoes in a tasteful cloth bag bought at the Mozart shop the day before. I intended to hand the bag of boots in with my coat, but in the event as we were in a box, we had our own little « cloakroom » at the back. It was a feature of Vienna life throughout our stay that all restaurants, concert houses, galleries and museums had cloakrooms to hand in one’s coat, hat, scarf, gloves and umbrella, as it was always so cold and wet outside and so warm indoors; it certainly made visiting museums and galleries much more comfortable.
We had supper at the opera café again, far more crowded than last time, with several reserved tables and others already full of smartly-dressed opera-goers. I ate the same thing as before as it was so good, a lovely mixture of Italian cold meats and antipasti called Rossini. (Many of the dishes had similar musical names....Three Tenors, for example) This time the large screens on the wall were showing « trailers » of the rest of the season’s productions. I was pleasantly surprised to find how many of them I knew.
Thanks to our guided tour we were quite familiar with the building and enjoyed walking round the different rooms and watching all the people, just as we do in Paris. We had had the sur-titling method explained to us during the guided tour; instead of large sur-titles over the top of the stage each seat had its own tiny screen with a choice of titles in English or German! N chose German and I chose English, but he kept sneaking glances at mine. (Only to see how things were translated, he said.)
The opera - Arabella - was sung in German, but thanks to the titles I was able to follow it all with no trouble at all and enjoyed it tremendously; even though it was nothing like I had ever seen before. The Vienna Philharmonic was duly impressive too; we tried to see whether we recognised any of them from the New Year’s Day concert, but no. There were several other ladies in our box; we all said « Guten Abend » to each other politely, and N was worried about the lady behind us not being able to see; she assured him she could hear perfectly and knew the story.
Once it was all over we said good night to them all again, and made our way outside where there were queues of taxis; fortunately we could get back to our hotel on foot. We both felt that it had been a wonderful evening, and N said he thought it was one of the greatest events of his life.
On Sunday morning when we looked out of the window sleet was falling instead of rain, slowly revolving downwards and melting on the ground. After breakfast we set off round the corner to the Stephansdom in time for 10.15 Mass, and managed to find places near the back. At first I found the Catholic service in German very strange; it seemed to be far more appropriate in French or Italian, but gradually recognised texts I had sung in German at various times. The spoken service was punctuated by the sung sections of the Haydn Mass; the first time I had ever heard it like that, but told myself that was how it was intended, not to be performed on a Saturday evening in a Cambridge concert hall. I had trouble recognising the Old Testament lesson, but did better with the New, and we both worked out when the Notices were being read. When the service was over we went up by the side of the altar to see the little orchestra which had played throughout, alongside the organ; the players all in their coats and a very young conductor, whom N said must feel himself following in Mozart’s and Haydn’s footsteps.
We walked out on to the steps at the side of the cathedral, and found the whole place covered in snow! I immediately began to take photos, first of a snow-covered model of the cathedral, then of N and of the rows of horses waiting patiently in rows with their carriages. We didn’t really know where we planned to go, and neither did anyone else it seemed, everyone was just walking about enjoying the snow. In the next road we came across loud amplified Strauss waltz music, and couples dancing in the snowy street; did this happen every Sunday morning, we wondered?
Eventually we had walked far enough and were feeling rather wet and cold, and arrived at the Griensteidl café again, and went in for some very welcome soup. At least I did, N suddenly realised it was Sunday Lunch time, and had something more substantial. By then we were discussing what else we wanted to see in the 24 hours we had left in Vienna; I was keen to see the Imperial Furniture Depot (N said no, not more chairs) and as it was closed on Mondays decided I would go that afternoon, while N went straight back to the hotel. I was very impressed to see snow-ploughs already hard at work outside the café, on a Sunday afternoon! It took me three underground stops and a lot of walking to reach the museum - the pavements were very slushy and snow kept dripping and sliding off the awnings over the shop windows. I was glad when I eventually arrived and even more glad of a cloakroom to leave my coat, umbrella etc.
The Imperial Furniture Depot contains all the unwanted furniture, paintings, textiles, china and glass removed from the Hapsburg palaces over several centuries, and has been open to the public since the 1920’s. Very few members of the public wanted to see it that afternoon, and I had the place almost to myself. There were several different themes running through it; rooms full of Sisi memorabilia of course, pictures and cine-film of various films made of Sisi’s life during the 1950’s starring Romy Schneider, using a lot of the original furniture; the film excerpts being shown alongside the items of furniture. There were also room settings one could look into, of various styles and periods, and then simply piles of paintings, chairs, beds, hat-stands, tables, writing desks, footstools and a roomful of wooden things I thought at first were plant holders but turned out to be spittoons! (I thought I would not like to have to clean wooden spittoons.) There were many glass cases of china, vases, table settings and some chamber pots labelled in English « For the use of Imperial Servants ».
In several museums and guides I had become aware of the name Biedermeier, describing a certain era in early 19th century Vienna, a cosy, homely, bourgeois style of furniture; an era, philosophy, a way of life. Nowhere could I find out the origin of the word Biedermeier however, and here it was again in the furniture depot, describing interiors and very specifically the time between the Congress of Vienna in 1816 and the Revolution of 1848. As the place was deserted I decided to ask one of the nearby museum guides what it meant; unfortunately the poor young man had an awful stammer and not much English. He told me more or less what I already knew; I said I'd kept coming across this word ever since I’d arrived in Vienna, but what was its origin? Was Biedermeier an architect? No, said the young man and assured me that when I got up to the next floor of the museum there would be a display about it. I thanked him and moved on, but after a few minutes he came up to me with a large picture book, text in English, and pointed to a paragraph telling me that Biedermeier was never a real person; there could have been 20 or so cabinet-makers in Vienna with that name in the early 1830’s, but it was thought to be a typical Viennese name; a sort of Mr Everyman. I thanked him very much and felt at last I had got to the bottom of the matter.
On the way back to the hotel the snow had become fine rain and by the time went out again to eat it was almost dry! We ate in a cheap modern Italian place in the opposite direction from the Cathedral, and then made our way to the Musikverein. The concert hall itself was very impressive, but the rooms and corridors behind were not nearly as spacious as at the opera house, and we hadn’t had the advantage of a guided tour to know our way about. We climbed up many flights of stairs to reach our places - almost like being at the Albert Hall - and then found we could have left our coats much nearer to our seats. These were in a kind of side balcony, but reached through a special numbered door as though it were a box.
The music itself was wonderful though, such an amazing impressive sound, and we felt very lucky to have been able to hear it, and that next January 1st we would look at the televised concert in quite a different way.
Monday was our last day - our flight was due to leave at 7.00 in the evening - so after a final breakfast we checked out and took the underground to the air terminal and checked in our luggage, hoping we would see it again that evening in Paris. The weather had improved dramatically; dry and sunny, although TV and newspapers were full of the surprise early winter of the day before, and there was still an icy cold wind. It did mean however that we could visit the one attraction N still wanted to see - the Prater, with its meadows and fun fair and the famous Big Wheel. The fun fair looked very sadly out of season and closed, and was full of dead leaves, like everywhere else in Vienna; we had seen huge heaps of them in corners of parks. Once we had seen and photographed everything we took a tram back to the city centre; it turned out to be a circular route so we went round again; as it was cold, windy and sunny it was very pleasant looking at all the views out of the tram windows! In all we went round four times during the day, pausing once or twice to get out and look at streets and shops we hadn’t seen before and also to have lunch at the Imperial Hotel, a very elegant place which had its own cloakroom at the entrance.
We had an excellent lunch and enjoyed the warmth and comfort; I was also impressed by the mirrored Ladies Room, with a hand towel system I had never seen before - small towels were threaded onto a silver pole, and once used fell to the bottom of the pole! There were also roses, and free perfumed hand lotion.
Eventually it was time to get back our coats again, and go round for one last tram ride; the weather was getting darker and it was good to be able to take the train directly to the air terminal without being outdoors again. The airport train was very modern and efficient, and the airport itself small but very busy.
We spent our spare time looking at shops and having our first and last apple strudel of the visit - disappointing I thought, as N had ordered it with custard. The flight was good, although dark, and therefore not much to see! Our luggage turned up as expected at Roissy, and we were lucky to get both our RER trains with no waiting, thus getting home by about 10.30, and managing to get into the building with no trouble at all from keys or badges!

Friday 26 October 2007
Monsieur B the TV engineer duly brought our set back on Wednesday afternoon; even though the screen is smaller than we have been used to the picture is very clear and the smaller silver-coloured set looks much better in the room than the huge black one he lent us. He agreed to take away N’s radio to have a look at it, and - even better - when I asked him if he knew of anyone who could repair vacuum cleaners he said he could do that too! This is our « downstairs » hoover, the one brought from Cambridge, which started being unreliable some weeks ago; I asked Marie-Antoinette if she knew where I could take it, she had no bright ideas but suggested I ask at the Quincaillerie; they said they dealt with some brands but not that one, and the only hope seemed to be if Monsieur B knew of anyone in L’Aigle. Meanwhile of course, we do have the luxury of the « upstairs » Italian hoover, but the result has been that I only bring it downstairs for the two carpeted rooms on the ground floor - the grande pièce and my study. For all the others - the salon, kitchen, dining room, front hall, back hall and verandah, it seems easier just to use a broom.
The other evening we received a phone call from Robert Urset - our former house agent - asking us to dinner on 8 December, when we shall be in Paris entertaining Claire, Dan and Charlotte. He also said he had called in one afternoon last week, but we weren’t there; it must have been the day we were shopping in Conches. We discussed it over dinner and said what a pity it was as we receive so few invitations like this - having hoped when we first arrived that it would only be a matter of time before we knew lots of people and had a busy social life.
Over the next two days however we received two more invitations in the post - it’s fairly unusual to receive hand-written envelopes addressed to us both! The first was from Professor J, N’s Hispanist colleague from the Sorbonne, enclosing a leaflet about the Château of Malmaison, near where he lives; and reminding us that we had said we would visit the Château. He had said when he was last here he would take us out to a restaurant as we have entertained him so well twice. He left it up to us to chose dates « this autumn » (not quite sure when he thinks that ends) but he is away a lot of the time we are in Paris over the next few weeks. N is pondering on all this, and also on all that Prof J also said about the on-going problem of trying to read an old Spanish thesis originally typed on an Amstrad.
The second envelope was from the Palmers, giving us their new address a few streets away in Saint-Denis, and an invitation to a housewarming, on an evening when we shall be in Vienna! They said they were also inviting Matt & Elke, so hoped we could come. I shall reply to this one, and hope we can see them (and especially their new apartment!) while we are in Saint-Denis either just before or just after we go to Vienna.
Yesterday morning N went to Conches to get yet more DIY supplies and this time I went along for the ride, as Thursday is market day in Conches. I also wanted to have a long and proper look at the main street, as when we have been there with guests we have only seen the section between the market and the castle. It was a cold morning and not many shops were open early, although the windows were very varied and interesting; about five boulangeries (how do they all stay in business?) several clothes shops and shoe shops and quite a few food shops. Also Monsieur Urset’s estate agency where we found this house on our very first visit to Conches. I would have called in to thank him again for his invitation, but as I went past he was with two clients, and on my way back he was on the phone. I walked right to the end of the town, (past the « Swan » hotel where we stayed on our first night in Normandy) where the path to the left went down a little hill by the side of very thick, high town walls, and there was a sort of Normandy country museum which seemed to be closed for the winter. All this left me very little time at the market, most of which I spent queuing at the most comprehensive vegetable stall I have ever seen; they even sold parsnips which N says are unknown here. The longer I waited the more different types of vegetables I saw; also topinembours (Jerusalem artichokes) for the first time this season; N is waiting to see when they appear before he digs up ours, as he has no idea when they will be ready. I bought vegetables to put with our white Italian beans in a Tuscan Bean Stew, probably for tomorrow as I also just had time to visit the famous fish stall to get smoked haddock for this evening.
Saturday 27 October 2007
Over the last few days I have had time to return to my War Letters project, which I left off at the beginning of last spring. I remembered how much I enjoyed it; like returning to a favourite serial and finding out what happened next. One of the reasons I had more time to devote to it was the winding down of dealing with vegetables coming in from the garden - but I now realise this was only because N was so busy redecorating the outhouses that he had not done any gardening recently! The weather is milder today, so he has dug up all the remaining beetroot, salsify, parsnips and topinembours and put most of them under sand in (carefully marked) old wooden wine boxes in the wine cellar. The topinembours look quite good - I have washed a few for tomorrow - and the parsnips are absolutely huge and very heavy, all about ten or eleven inches long and three or four inches across at their widest. It’s a good job we don’t have to eat them all at once.
As for the salsify, it must be the most ugly and labour-intensive vegetable I have ever come across and I hope its taste will be worth it. N appreciates the fact that it says in my copy of Jane Grigson’s « Vegetable Book » (an invaluable publication) that although rejected by the general public - in Britain presumably - salsify have always been grown by intelligent gardeners.
The Potting Shed is reaching the end of its make-over; some of the wall paint flaked off as it was applied (I had the same problem with the outdoor window sills) but it is a lot clearer, and once N has re-done the offending walls on Monday they will all be the same colour white, despite being uneven, which I am sure will not be noticed once it is full of tools, pots, fertilizers etc. The new indoor window sills look very good - and useful - and a new row of four spotlights on the ceiling is just what was required and infinitely preferable to the dangling light bulb. There is a problem with damp along the outside edge backed onto our neighbour’s property - the house For Sale where the dogs live. N thought what was needed was an application of cement from the other side, i.e. from our neighbours’ garden. This morning he went round and apparently found Monsieur pruning the roses, and quite amenable to N doing some cementing; N said some cement had already been applied, and the technique was even worse then his own! He also discovered that the house dated from the 1740's. The real problem though is that there is no gutter on the neighbours’ side so all the rain falls straight down the wall into the ground, right against the floor of our potting shed.
This morning a third hand-written envelope arrived addressed to us both; perhaps these things always come in threes! It was an invitation to another event we won’t be able to attend, from Cambridge friends Zoë and Samin who stayed with us last spring, inviting us to their wedding celebration at the end of November. But it’s good to know so many people remember us and are thinking of us.
Sunday 28 October 2007
This morning we needed to put all the clocks back; it always seems to take a long time and I never know afterwards if they're correct or a minute or two out either way. I leave N to do the one in the dining room, which I can't reach and the one on the radio in the salon, which I can never make out. Although we now wake up in the light (daylight at 7.30 instead of 8.30) I now spend a long time lowering all the blinds in the late afternoon.
On the boat on the way home from Britain I finished reading the penultimate volume of « Les Thibault » and am waiting before reading the last volume about WWI, so that I can savour it. Meanwhile I have caught up with the latest issue of the London Review of Books which was here waiting for me and have finally begun my « pre-Vienna » reading.
This - apart from the guide book - consists of a Life of Mahler, (one of a CUP series, in English) given to me by a very intellectual Austrian from Vienna who stayed with me at Ainsworth Street some years ago. I began reading it then but had to stop and decided I would read it again when I went to Vienna. I’m about a third of the way though and am finding lots of interesting comparisons; with Les Thibault, Mozart’s letters and Proust, to name but a few.
The other book I hoped to read (perhaps when I’m there, even) is a dual language French/German edition of Kafka’s Die Verwandlung, bought in the German bookshop in Paris about two years ago. This will of course be in an attempt to remember some German again. N keeps turning the television to German channels, but the content of the programmes is not always very stimulating. The other evening however we found a very good dramatisation of the life of Pope John Paul II; we were able to watch it in French, I don’t know what language it was originally. We seemed to have missed the first episode, but saw the last two on consecutive evenings. I found the parts dealing with the assassination attempt particularly moving.
Lunch today was memorable; the first time either of us had eaten salsify and the first time we had eaten our own topinembours. The latter were soft and tasty and wonderful, much better than those from the market, and I’m glad there are lots more. The salsify however, were still hard work - after boiling them I had to scrape off the dirty brown skin as quickly as I could - and they tasted a little like parsnips, but not quite as good. We ate them with a spicy chicken dish, and N was happily counting the number of our own garden products included in the meal; apart from these two there was our own onion in with the chicken, apples in the chutney and rhubarb in the crumble.
Monday 29 October 2007
This morning in the boulangerie I overheard a young woman speaking English to her two small children and when I came face to face with her outside as she parked her car, I remarked that we didn’t often hear it spoken here. She laughed; it turned out that she lived somewhere remote beyond Ambenay, and was just as surprised to have found me, as she seemed to come shopping often in LNL. She talked about an English couple with a large house nearby having invited other English speakers; I told her we lived at number three and to let me know if there was anything going on. N said afterwards - and I agreed - that I should have given her my card. Will make sure I have a supply in my purse, instead of just in my diary. (Which I do not normally take to the boulangerie.)
Tuesday 30 October 2007
Yesterday evening I finished my embroidery - the all red counted cross stitch sampler kit bought from a brocante sale for one euro. I then spent the rest of the evening going through all the embroidery patterns, thread, fabric etc that was in the little old tin trunk I brought from Cambridge; not looked at since I put it all into store, in the hope that I would take it up again one day, and was pleased to find that there is plenty I can be getting on with, as it can turn into an expensive hobby if one keeps buying kits.
So this morning I caught the bus to L’Aigle and took my finished sampler into the sewing shop to have it framed, and will collect it some time in late November. There wasn’t really a lot to do or look at in L’Aigle - as we are going to Paris so soon it was not worth buying a lot to eat (or any flowers - and in any case the whole flower market was given over to pots of chrysanthemums as it is getting very close to the first day of November.)
Meanwhile N went to the hairdressers and amongst other things talked about vegetables; told them all about his parsnips and said that I would take them one when I go there tomorrow! I am quite sure this is the first time that I - or indeed anybody - have taken a parsnip to the hairdressers.
Wednesday 30 October 2007
They were very busy at the hairdressers this morning, because they will be closed tomorrow I suppose; November 1st, all Saints Day, is a holiday. At least I read a lot of the Life of Mahler while I was waiting. N’s stylist Sylvie was very pleased to receive her parsnip, which she referred to as ‘le petit légume » (I said no, it was quite big) and various clients who were having their hair done were also keen to have a look. I advised her to boil it gently or roast it, not grate it as she suggested; I think she was thinking of celeriac. Also, saw Marie-Antoinette there, with her two grand-daughters, who are called Mathilde and Constance. She seemed very envious when I said we were going to Vienna, and said she thought one would need to look quite smart there. I agreed.
Two interesting things in N’s post today; his house keys lost in Paris at the end of September, with the special numbered tag, have turned up! A letter today asked him to get in touch, so he has asked them to be posted here ready for when we get back. Also, notice of a new system of « badge » entry to the apartments at Saint-Denis, inconveniently starting the day we go to Vienna. We will need to make some kind of arrangement with the gardienne.
Today is bright and sunny and N has had a huge on-going bonfire, burning about a year’s worth of vegetation from under the big fir-tree, now that the potager is empty of most of the vegetables. We are beginning to make lists and preparations for packing to go to Saint-Denis tomorrow, ready to go on to Vienna next week. It is rather nice to be able to say « ....when we are away next week in Paris and Vienna .... » but, as N would say, « That’s what we’re here for. »